Uses and abuses of Carl Schmitt

Paul Piccone and Gary Ulmen


This ideological approach is needed to legitimate predominant relations of domination (obtaining primarily among a ruling elite of experts, professionals, politicians, etc., and a well-administered citizenry) as being neutral and natural. Not only does this framework require automatic dismissal of all other modes of political organization, but also discrediting ideas perceived to be their ideological foundations. The result is a series of distortions and misinterpretations, which instead of defending and strengthening American institutions as claimed, weaken and undermine them by systematically occluding their real nature, and redefining them in extraneous "republican" terms--terms abstracted from European political realities brought about by the French Revolution. It is paradoxical that a European thinker such as Schmitt, whose entire career was focused primarily on strictly European problems, provides some of the most powerful conceptual tools to make sense of this peculiar predicament--including the idiosyncratic reaction to his ideas by managerial-liberal apologists, who see him as a major threat to the oxymoronic system they describe as liberal-democracy.

Trapped within the metaphysical parameters of a unidirectional theory of history that can interpret radical differences only as deviations or pathologies, managerial-liberal thought confronts the 20th and now the 21st century through obsolete, historically-specific categories hypostatized to the level of universality. The result is the homogenization of history and the elimination of particularity. When not dismissing it outright, such a de facto Manichean approach can deal with "the other" only as a variation on the same. Thus, whenever otherness appears, it must either be persuaded back into full sameness or else summarily liquidated as evil. Despite all the rhetoric about openness through "undistorted communication" and interminable dialogue, participation in discussions and deliberations is conditional on the prior acceptance of unchallengeable rules concerning a formal rationality and mode of discourse which automatically exclude all but those intellectuals and professionals fully initiated into the predominant jargon.

(5) Consequently, confrontation with "the other" cannot result in any Hegelian transcendence, whereby development takes place by internalizing and thus coopting the opponent's moment of truth, but freezes radically opposing positions into a stalemate that only perpetuates conflict ad infinitum--pending resolution by other means. It is never a matter of reintegrating the radical opponent's counter-claims, but of either demanding capitulation or proceeding with outright rejection.

Within such a dogmatic scientistic context pretending to be ideologically neutral, history becomes straightjacketed as an ontogenetic reconstruction of the triumphal march of managerial-liberal thought. Particular categories developed within particular contexts to explain particular phenomena are automatically integrated within the predominant universalist framework to apply anywhere, anytime.

The same happens with particular political ideologies. Thus, competing systems such as Nazism, fascism and communism--and now even Islamic integralism--are not only systematically misinterpreted, but, like liberalism, also universalized as permanent threats to a managerial liberalism hypostatized as the natural outcome of evolution and, therefore, as normal and natural. This is why such political thinkers as Schmitt, whose work was always inextricably rooted in problematic historical contexts, (6) can still be perceived as an ideological threat, long after those concrete historical situations have faded into the past. Because for a time he was opportunistically embroiled in Nazi politics, and the new American anti-Schmittians see Nazism and fascism not as closed chapters of 20th century history, but rather as permanent threats to liberalism, Schmitt's ideas are interpreted as something that must be eliminated, rather than as challenges to be confronted.

In fact, the demonization of Schmitt is instrumentalized to defend the status quo and predominant relations of domination. Assumed to be the best of all possible systems, the existing managerial framework, run by a New Class elite, legitimates itself as the only bulwark of Western values by opposing all competing alternatives--equally rooted in the Western tradition--as lethal threats to its own interpretation of progress and emancipation. During the Cold War, the de facto permanent state of emergency contributed to the academic institutionalization of this state of affairs, which persists long after both Nazism and fascism (and, after 1989, even communism) have been vanquished. Worse yet, it perpetuates a Jacobin historiography predicated on the primacy of economic, rather than of political parameters, primarily as a straggle between capitalism and the poor, rather than as one between intellectuals and politicians versus ordinary people.

American Exceptionalism versus European Universalism

Yet, the political imperatives of the Cold War were not the only obstacles preventing serious debate concerning the nature of fascism, Nazism, and communism (7)--and thus also of liberalism and its theoretical foundations. The ascendant republican reinterpretations of American history have contributed to the occlusion of American particularism and its mainstreaming into managerial-liberal universal history. The subject of so much debate in Germany, this American version of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung had nothing to do with guilt or nationalism, but with the often unacknowledged and continuing struggle over American historiography and the question of American exceptionalism: whether the US is just another European-style nation-state confronting similar socio-economic problems and political choices, or a federation sui generis, whose understanding requires altogether different categories of analysis.

From a foreign policy perspective, this question would be one of imperialism or isolationism. In terms of social and political theory, it concerns the viability of importing the allegedly universally-valid categories of European liberal theory to analyze particular American political realities. (8)

Forced by WWII into playing the major world power role it had rejected after refusing to join the League of Nations, and subsequently confronted with the communist threat, the US in the second half of the 20th century abruptly rejected isolationist sentiments that had resurfaced in the interwar period. Instead, it sought to mainline its own self-understanding within the kind of universalist political framework it had traditionally rejected since George Washington's Farewell Address--at least until Sept. 11, when the Islamic fundamentalist attack made the irreducibility of radical otherness unmistakably obvious. (9) Suddenly, the inherent universalist pretenses of liberalism again were demonstrated to be what they had always been, i. e., the expression of a particular version of secularized Christianity. This cataclysmic development encouraged a turn toward unilateralism in foreign affairs--something that had been developing slowly since the end of the Cold War.

Although defined by the Cold War, the postwar years were also characterized by an American administration attempting to fine-tune the New Deal--a collectivist project of socio-economic reconstruction that had been strengthened considerably by war mobilization, but remained unable to legitimate itself fully on the basis of those deep-rooted Protestant values of decentralized governance and local self- determination embedded in the US Constitution. Consequently, with the gradual shift from isolationism to imperialism and from classical to managerial liberalism, which had begun toward the end of the 19th century, but had stalled temporarily in the 1920s (in reaction to WWI), American historiography broke with its traditional exceptionalism.

What took its place was a slight variation of the unilinear theory of history espoused by its managerial-liberal and, even more, its former communist opponents. The "pursuit of happiness," previously left to the discretion of particular communities, was redefined in terms of full and equal participation in a well-administered, professionalized society (a euphemism for socialism and social homogenization), projected as the inevitable outcome of all historical developments. As with all secularized versions of the Christian theory of history, deviations from such a path came to be seen as pathologies or breaks, rather than as legitimate alternatives.

On the ideological level, there was a general homogenization of American and European history, which made possible a transposition of European experiences to interpret American realities, and vice-versa. Thus, legitimate political projects concerned with defending traditions and organic social relations, such as those of most branches of American conservatism, were uncritically associated with brutally repressive modernizing ideologies, such as fascism and Nazism, which instrumentalized pseudo-traditions and mythical communities to gain power and legitimacy. Successfully ghettoized by the dominant universalist managerial framework, these legitimate political projects were systematically discredited as obstructions to progress and collective emancipation. (10) Although in economic matters they were mostly 19th century laissez-faire liberals, American conservatives who opposed the New Deal's centralization, homogenization, and planning (and, of course, the regulation and containment of capitalism) came to be practically criminalized. According to the standard Marxist reading of fascism and Nazism in Europe, they were seen as obstructions to progress and bent on violating legality whenever "democratic aspirations" demanded radical socio-economic changes threatening existing relations of privilege (the American version of the Dimitrov model).

(11) By the same token, those European conservative thinkers who opportunistically collaborated with fascist or Nazi regimes suffered an even worse fate. Instead of being condemned for attempting to integrate their rather different worldviews into what in 1933 was still a rather vague and heterogeneous Nazi ideology, they were demonized as evil figures whose ideas had actually paved the way for fascist and Nazi regimes by undermining liberal-democratic institutions--especially the legal system--even though their criticism of liberal institutions may have been made within a general liberal framework (as in Schmitt's case), and their understanding of Nazism may have differed fundamentally from what eventually became the official version.

The Politics of the Schmitt Reception

While there are very good reasons to criticize Schmitt and others like him for making terrible political choices in the 1930s, over half a century after the defeat of fascism and Nazism these judgments should not remain obstacles to objective evaluations of their ideas. This has not been the case within "politically correct," universalist, managerial-liberal perspectives. To the extent that, for managerial-liberal thought, fascism and Nazism remain permanent possibilities whenever capitalist development stalls, any conservative thought is a potential threat not only to "progress" and "emancipation," but also to liberal legal frameworks that allow this "progress" and "emancipation" to take place through democratic means. This universalization and inflation of the power of historically specific concepts helps explain both the extraordinary hostility toward Schmitt (and other influential conservative scholars), and why his ideas have generated so much academic interest for a thinker whose work, for the most part, remains inextricably rooted in the German political realities between the two world wars. In creating false fears concerning its contemporary political relevance, these critics have also prevented the articulation of the kind of legitimate criticism that Schmitt's work warrants, as well as an appreciation of his contributions to political philosophy and the history of legal thought.

Although practically nothing had been published in the US on or by Schmitt before 1970, when the first book on Schmitt in English appeared, (12) there now is speculation that not only has there been an uninterrupted "silent dialogue" between leading post-WWII American political thinkers (mostly German emigres forced out of Nazi Germany) and Schmitt, but that he has had considerable influence on such contemporary American conservative thinkers as Allan Bloom, William Kristol, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Buchanan--all implicitly criminalized as the intellectual storm-troopers of a potentially fascist involution in the US. (13) John McCormick even attempts "to build a bridge between past and present, between interwar German fascism and post-WWII North American conservatism," by showing the nefarious influence of Schmitt on Leo Strauss. Yet, American conservatives (14) have never shown any interest in Schmitt or his work. It was not until the early 1990s that the only book on Schmitt written by someone associated with the American Right appeared--a scholarly discussion of some of Schmitt's more controversial ideas, making no suggestions about their potential relevance to concrete conservative politics in the US.

Rare attempts to even hint at the possible use of Schmitt's ideas in emergency situations in the US, e. g., to justify suspension of "the rule of law," (15) are ludicrous. Unlike often unstable European parliamentary systems, characterized by historically polarized (but increasingly converging) Left and Right parties, the US has clear-cut procedures in place concerning conflict-resolution during crises. Moreover, there has always been an exceptionally strong political consensus--even at the height of the Viet-Nam War--that readily allows deployment of emergency measures, enacted via standard legal procedures, as evidenced by the few times this has happened, such as the Tonkin Bay Resolution or the passage of questionable anti-terrorist legislation following Sept. 11.

Yet, hostility toward Schmitt's work is so intense that it spills over onto what anti-Schmittians smear as "Schmitt apologists"--those who view Schmitt as someone more interesting and relevant than a mere Nazi ideologue. This intensity cannot be explained solely in terms of differences of scholarly opinion. It is rooted in more subtle political issues. (16) While the motivation seems to be clear, i. e., that the "apology" somehow is related to a diabolical conservative attempt to re-habilitate fascist or Nazi ideology by de-Nazifying Schmitt and legitimating his dangerous ideas, the charge makes no sense and is a typical result of the confusion of European and American political realities.

For example, the alleged "apologists" have no connection to conservatism: Joseph W. Bendersky (author of the first intellectual biography of Schmitt in English) has always been a liberal; George Schwab lost several close family members in Nazi camps and cannot possibly be suspected of fascist sympathies; and Telos (which published the first special issue on Schmitt in English) has been the main organ of New Left philosophy and theory in the US since 1968. Thus, the conflict of interpretations is not between Left and Right--or between conservatives and managerial liberals--but exclusively between what remains of the Left after the debacle of the New Left in the
1970s and the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s.

These conflicting interpretations can be traced to a fundamental split (17) that resurfaced after the collapse of New Left expectations, within what has always been a highly heterogeneous Left in the US--a split that dates to the beginning of the socialist movement in the 19th century. It is now reconfigured as a division between two groups. The first consists of those who have sought accommodation with the existing managerial liberalism, reinterpreted as a more palatable version of that same neo-Stalinist collectivist ideology that could not be marketed during the Cold War (and even less after the collapse of "really- existing socialism" in 1989). The second consists of those attempting to transcend the constraints of corrupt Left dogma and to redefine "emancipation" in terms of those Left traditions (such as the anarchists and the Frankfurt School, before its conformist "communicative" involution) historically repressed by a Marxism-Leninism whose positions and ideas had gained hegemony within the Left due to the Soviet Union's prestige as a world power.

Telos' initial interest in Schmitt's work was triggered in the 1980s by the realization, in the wake of the collapse of the New Left and under the influence of Norberto Bobbio's criticism, that the Left in general and Marxism in particular had no political theory. (18) Thus, it was essential to rethink the political framework of a Left that, having been lost for decades in the swamps of Stalinism and their periphery of fellow- travellers, was unable to redefine an autonomous emancipatory program independently of liberal models, totalitarian aberrations, or weaker technocratic variations. This is why the first special issue of a journal (19) devoted entirely to Schmitt's thought was subtitled "Enemy or Foe?" following a standard Schmittian distinction between an "enemy" (Feind) worthy of respect as an equal, and a "foe" (absolute Feind, since German does not have a separate word)--an unworthy opponent who must be exterminated. (20) This debate was metaphorically meant to distinguish between continuing the blank condemnation of Schmitt, typical of West German intellectuals unable or unwilling to confront the past independently of imposed Cold War limitations, and to engage in a critical confrontation with his ideas, which kept resurfacing, despite constant dismissals as part of an undifferentiated and vague Nazi ideology. While reminiscent of the more popular Schmittian definition of politics in terms of "friend or enemy," which would have implied acceptance or rejection of Schmitt ideas, the contraposition of "blank condemnation" and "critical discussion" was proposed to open an inquiry free of earlier prejudices and distortions.

The proposal fell on deaf ears. The new American anti-Schmittians not only missed the point, but have succeeded in recasting discussions of Schmitt in sterile and irrelevant post-WWII West German molds reducing Schmitt exclusively to the level of a Nazi theorist. In this bizarre effort to depict Schmitt as a diabolical nemesis committed to the Nazification of the world, even the distinction "friend/enemy" is mistranslated as "friend/ foe," (21) which unintendedly describes correctly the way in which the Schmitt discussion has been reconfigured.

Schmitt's Analysis of the US

Along with most European scholars of his generation, Schmitt did not have any direct experience of l'Amerique profonde, and limited himself to discussing the US strictly from the viewpoint of international law and foreign policy. Yet, although these studies--especially those written following his expulsion from the Nazi Party in 1936--are primarily historical and as tied to immediate political problems as all of his other works, they cover broad time spans and provide heuristic insights into contemporary political predicaments. As a conservative intellectual deeply committed to German interests, Schmitt resented the US for imposing the Versailles Treaty on Germany and consequently devastating the German economy in the early 1920s, (22) for having introduced a discriminatory concept of war during WWI, (23) and for his own incarceration as a potential war criminal by American occupation forces from September 1945 to March 1947. (24) Nevertheless, he was in awe of the US and its impact on Europe and the rest of the world. He even considered the American Monroe Doctrine, enunciated early in the 19th century, to be the model for a possible new world order based on Grossraume--although he lamented the fact that the US had abandoned this strategy at the end of the 19th century, and had become an imperialist power. (25) Schmitt's last major work, Der Nomos der Erde, describes "the Eurocentric epoch" of world history as beginning with the discovery of America and ending with the rise of the US as a world power. (26)

According to Schmitt, the US was very interested in participating in international economic affairs, while remaining politically distant and thus unaccountable to anyone. This ambiguity of American foreign policy eventually became, and remains, a problem for world order. After the collapse of the Soviet empire, the US became a global system allegedly regulated by a neutral market, but under de facto US hegemony. The ambiguity remains. (27) A prime example is the American government's response to the Sept. 11 attacks, which it defines both as (a-political) international criminal deeds and as (political) war acts. Thereby, it introduced a new concept of war and legitimated military intervention anywhere, while reserving the right to decide unilaterally which actions to take.

These crucial issues are apparently of little interest to the new Schmitt critics. Instead, they remain obsessed with Schmitt's politics during the Third Reich, and insist on transposing these experiences into an altogether different historical context, while quixotically charging the long-since demolished windmills of Nazi and fascist ideas as hidden intellectual resources for American conservatives. (28) Following in the footsteps (or, rather, missteps) of otherwise respected historians, such as George Mosse,
(29) who unwarrantedly charged Schmitt with subscribing to the theory of the Aryan race, or Jeffrey Heft, who insists on reading Schmitt as one of the more irrational "conservative revolutionaries," (30) these self-appointed ideological gate-keepers (31) have managed to restrict the American reception of Schmitt's ideas to the least relevant of his contributions, inextricably rooted in pre-1936 European realities and impossible to transpose either to an American context or to apply to today's international affairs.
(32) Most recent works and discussions are predicated on the unwarranted and unsubstantiated assumption that Schmitt's involvement with Nazism was not merely a matter of opportunism or bad judgement, but the result of a profound affinity between his thought and the ideology the enthymeme that any appropriation of these ideas will probably have the same results they had in Germany in the early 1930s, especially if the US enters into an economic crisis of similar dimensions.

These American anti-Schmittians ignore the fact that Schmitt opposed both the communist and the Nazi parties during the Weimar Republic (34) (and secretly conspired with the German army in Berlin until the very last minute to keep the Nazis out of power); (35) that the Nazis were always suspicious of him as not being a real Nazi; that his emphasis on the state rather than on the party after Hitler's rise to power resulted in his expulsion from the Nazi Party in 1936; (36) and that thereafter he was under surveillance, had his mail read, and had political observers at his lectures. Disregarding their own claims to be sensitive to socio-historical particularity and cultural specificity, these anti-Schmittians conflate past and present, earlier European realities with contemporary American experiences, (37) and end up projecting the political predicament of Germany in the 1930s onto today's US, which has entirely different political traditions, where fascism has never been a threat, and whose internal conflicts can be understood only by deploying a different conceptual apparatus.

The objective of this inflation of Schmitt's ideas as the possible juridical justification for an ever-present fascist/Nazi threat is to provide increasingly conformist Left academics with the kind of legitimation and content their "emancipatory" socialist ideology needs after bureaucratic centralism became discredited with the collapse of the USSR. Thus, anti-fascism has become the eschatological core of an otherwise vacuous Left ideology now reconfigured as the legitimating arm of the managerial state. (38) No longer able to present themselves as the vanguard of progressive forces paving the way for a bright socialist future, they have now regrouped as part of an academic rear-guard entrusted with protecting "civil society" and liberal values against the market and other forces of darkness--a kind of quixotic kathekon seeking to prevent a recurrence of the fascist experience in a context where there has never been any such threat.

The proposed scenario is crystal-clear: during economic crises, Schmitt can provide "neo-conservative forces" (39) with the intellectual resources needed to justify suspension of "the rule of law" and, as in the case of the Weimar Republic, to deploy repressive measures necessary to uphold existing relations of domination threatened by "democratic" forces demanding containment or overthrow of capitalism. (40) Translated into American political realities, where there is hardly a peep anywhere into American political realities, where there is hardly a peep anywhere about socialism (except for a few "politically correct" academic islands), this model ends up ascribing to "democratic forces" a defensive role: to prevent the alleged roll-back of the welfare state and to oppose other austerity policies under the Reagan and succeeding administrations. Plausible as an account of what may have taken place in some Third World countries, e. g., Chile in the early 1970s, (41) whose economy was about to be destroyed by the introduction of "socialist planning" and the nationalization of private enterprises, this worn-out Diamat model makes no sense when projected onto the US.

The Fascist Threat

According to McCormick: "Fascism ... has not been locked away forever but rather lives on--not only in `developing' areas of South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, but elsewhere in Europe and in the United States." (42) Alleged evidence for this claim is an unsubstantiated resurgence of "neo-Nazism, militia movements, `Christian identity' ideologies, ethnic cleansing, racially motivated mass rape, violent attacks on immigrant workers and foreigners, bombing of abortion clinics and state administrative buildings, and assasination of the proponents of peace." (43) Such frightening scenarios, however, can only be the inventions of a paranoid imagination. Nothing of the kind has occurred recently in either the US or Western Europe. Some of these horrible, scattered events have occurred in remote parts of the globe during the past few years, largely in connection with brutal civil wars in pre-modern societies being forced to become nations in the post-colonial era. They cannot be taken out of context and projected indiscriminately onto advanced industrial societies. (The Middle East is a special case). Crime statistics in the US have been going down for the past several years, and, except for exceptional terrorist acts such as those on Sept. 11 or other scattered incidents, the country has not been this safe and peaceful in many years.

While some of the horrors McCormick lists, such as ethnic cleansing and racially motivated mass rape, occurred briefly in places such as Bosnia or remote corners of Africa, it is absurd to claim that this is happening or is likely to happen in the foreseeable future in North America or Europe. While there have been some occasional outbursts of neo-Nazism in places such as Germany, Great Britain, and Russia, by numerically irrelevant and politically meaningless gangs, it is preposterous to think that wannabe-Hitlers are everywhere. The success of the various Le Pens, Haiders, Bossis, et. al. represent, at best, vague populist protests easily coopted within mainstream political parties. Even the Oklahoma City bombing, no matter how misguided and deplorable it was, cannot be associated with anything resembling fascism.

It was planned and executed as revenge for the Waco incident and, more generally, as revenge for what the perpetrators interpreted to be an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government. If anything, it could be construed as a misguided reaction against what was misperceived as "fascist" abuses by the American government. (44) But this is the real problem with the anti-Schmittians demonization of both Schmitt and fascism: a profound misunderstanding of fascism as a concrete historical phenomenon and its interpretation through a crude Marxist philosophy of history predicated on the inevitability of "progress."

McCormick's approach, shared by Scheuerman, Dyzenhaus, and others, deals with fascism as "attempts to stake out secure positions against the rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape in the supposedly timeless entities of family, nation, and faith." (45) This is a variation on the old Diamat account of the historically obsolete relations of production clashing with the new forces of production. As a result, existing social relations (capitalism) refuse to adapt to new realities by implementing fundamental changes (presumably, the institutionalization of socialism), thus precipitating the suspension of "the rule of law," the imposition of authoritarian measures, and the suppression of democracy.

From this viewpoint, far from being another modernizing ideology--no matter how brutal and destructive it may have been--fascism is the last resort for conservative forces seeking to retain existing relations of privilege that stand in the way of human emancipation. (46) This is why so much effort is exerted to demonstrate a non-existent connection between Schmitt's ideas and those of American conservatives, presumably caught in the same bind as German capitalists during the last days of the Weimar Republic, when "progressive forces" allegedly threatened German relations of production (capitalism). (47) When push comes to shove and the existing legal structure ("the rule of law") becomes an obstacle to an effective defense of the status quo, then Schmitt's theories concerning the state of exception and other legal means to remove any obstacles preventing the implementation of outright authoritarian measures become essential to conservative political strategies. This is why it is necessary to checkmate Schmitt's influence before it becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of threatened capitalists, allegedly ins ensitive to liberal institutions and fundamental freedoms. This is also why the defense of "the rule of law" is of such importance: allegedly, Schmitt's ideas provide the theoretical tools to legitimate setting aside the rule of law, thus paving the way for the worst forms of authoritarian regimes.